Scottish Greens
Scottish Green Party; won 8 Holyrood seats on 7 May 2026, confidence-and-supply route to Swinney.
The Scottish Greens won 15 Holyrood seats on 7 May 2026, including Lorna Slater's defeat of the SNP's Angus Robertson in Edinburgh Central, and now give John Swinney's minority government a 73-seat pro-independence bloc.
Last refreshed: 7 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can the Scottish Greens hold seven seats and coalition leverage in a Holyrood election they are contesting from opposition?
Timeline for Scottish Greens
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UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: YouGov puts the Greens at 15%, down from 17%
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Swinney's Section 30 ask, trigger missed
UK Local Elections 2026Swinney pushes Section 30, seven short
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Reform enters Holyrood on 17 MSPs
UK Local Elections 2026Background
Scottish Greens are a Scottish political party whose 2026 Holyrood platform centred on public transport, wealth taxation, green employment and opposition to new North Sea oil and gas licences. The party set out those policies in an 89-page manifesto published on 14 April 2026.
The party entered government as the Scottish National Party’s junior partner under the Bute House Agreement from 2021 until 2024. Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay co-led the party into the 2026 election.
On 14 April 2026, Patrick Harvie said that the idea of a fully funded manifesto was misleading after the Institute for Fiscal Studies criticised every major Scottish party’s plans.
The Greens hold the Holyrood balance
On 7 May 2026, the Scottish Greens returned 15 MSPs. Lorna Slater took Edinburgh Central from Angus Robertson, the SNP's external affairs secretary, by 12,680 votes to 7,702. It was the party's second-ever Holyrood constituency seat, and it came against a figure often named as a successor to John Swinney.
The SNP finished on 58 of 129 seats, short of a majority, and Swinney formed a minority administration expecting informal Green support. Together the two parties hold 73 seats, the bloc Swinney cited when he requested a Section 30 order on 14 May despite missing his own 65-seat SNP trigger. On 26 May their combined votes won Holyrood's 72-55 division demanding a Section 30 order.